CLEVELAND, Ohio — When she discovered that her 7-year-old daughter didn’t have a chair at school, Riana Spivey had enough. After a heated meeting with officials at the charter school, she pulled her daughter, Jakiya, out of the school and enrolled her in another one.

Grandma Evelyn Spivey said a chair is basic: "You can’t learn if your legs are tired," she said. But officials of Imagine Cleveland Academy, a K-5 charter school with about 250 students on East 93rd Street in Cleveland, make no apologies for the lack of a chair for Jakiya.

As an exercise, her third grade teacher had each of the students consider their needs and "buy" their equipment and supplies on the first day of school. Jakiya bought a desk like the other students, but chose a dry-erase board and colored pens instead of a chair.

She wasn’t forced to stand. Kids can sit on the newly carpeted floor or bean bag chairs. And each week they get a chance to make other purchases.

Principal Pharon West said despite complaints from Jakiya’s family, she’s considering expanding the idea to other classrooms: "Students, including the ones on our campus, are bombarded with marketing messages. Our lesson on wants vs. needs is vital to helping them navigate our consumer-driven society," she said.

Teacher Jenn Heyman said the exercise would help kids with math, learning the value of money and understanding the difference between wants and needs.

"I wanted my classroom plan to model a real-life situation as much as possible; the desks symbolize houses, while the chairs symbolize cars. Students even have ‘license plates’ for their chairs, and if chairs are not ‘parked’ correctly, they are ‘towed’ and the student must pay a fee to have their chair released," Heyman wrote in an e-mail.

"Every aspect of this plan is designed to instill in my students the traits necessary to become motivated, responsible, successful citizens in the future," she said.

"I’m all for that. I’m all for responsibility," said Jakiya’s grandmother. "But they should be telling them, ‘Get what’s necessary first.’ Help them make a correct decision. If you just give a kid money and tell them to buy anything at the grocery store, they’re going to buy candy, not spinach."

Heyman said most of her students already have learned a lot by the exercise.

"I make it a point to be sure that every child knows, without a doubt, that I love them," she wrote. "When I consider my goals for them in the future, I am sure that this plan is aligned with those goals."

West, the principal, said more innovative ideas like this one are welcome: "We truly believe that if you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten, and we plan on giving our students an education better than anything they’ve had in the past."

Decade of laughter: Try getting up on stage and making a room full of people laugh. It’s not easy. Especially night after night, week after week, month after month.

It’s not easy keeping the laughs rolling, either, if you’re the owner of a comedy club. But Nick Kostis keeps plugging away.

On Thursday, his club – Hilarities Fourth St. Theatre – celebrated its 10-year anniversary with Kostis in an unfamiliar place – on stage hosting an evening show with headliner Tom Papa.

East Fourth has come a long way in 10 years.

"I had a dream. For me it was a case of build it and they will come. But the true visionary wasn’t even here yet. It was Rick Maron’s son, Ari (Maron). He’s a visionary," said Kostis of the developer who brought restaurants, coffee shops and a bowling alley bar to the neighborhood.

"It’s not easy in this recessionary period that is unparalleled in our lifetime. But I’m still here and sometimes I don’t know how. We’ve stumbled, but never fallen," said Kostis.

Laughter abides.

"I have this fundamental belief that comedy contributes something to the culture. It is mentally healing. Physiologically it has an effect. Comedy is part of our DNA. It separates us from the rest of the animal world," Kostis said. "No one regards them as historians or sociologists or psychologists, but every week they come through and they help us see our humanness in our mistakes and our pratfalls."

Bootstraps: Tweet of the week: From comedian Mike Polk Jr. : "’We were so poor growing up that we couldn’t even afford hyperboles about how poor we were growing up. -- All RNC and DNC Speakers."

View full sizePeggy Turbett, The Plain DealerA black bear, about 6 feet tall, moves higher up a tree Tuesday as spray from a firehose attempts to move it downward after the animal climbed about 40 feet into the branches at Rockside Park Apartments in Bedford Heights.

Busy bear: It takes no time for fake Twitter accounts to pop up nowadays. Clint Eastwood wasn’t done lecturing an empty chair before @InvisibleObama came to life.

Former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland was still lambasting Mitt Romney when @OutsourcedElf gained an online persona. And as President Bill Clinton spoke Wednesday and spittle collected in the corner of his lips, @ClintonSpittle began its Twitter life.

So why not the Bedford Bear?

@TheBedfordBear began tweeting while the bear was still clinging to a tree.

After some publicity in local media, it has more than 1,500 followers.

"Trapped me in a tree, shot water at me, chased me onto 271, now I’m lost in the woods and it’s pouring. How is it not Monday?"

The bear is even taunting the media, as with a this tweet at a Channel 19 reporter:

@BlakeChenault19: "I’m (whisper) EVERYWHERE!"

Fine dining:If you ask a kid what her favorite subject in school is, you’re bound to hear "lunch!"

Even the girls at college prep school St. Joseph Academy on Cleveland’s West Side, who study pre-engineering and Mandarin Chinese, are more likely to give that answer, thanks to a just-finished cafeteria renovation.

We can’t vouch for the mystery meat special, but The St. Joe’s cafeteria now has the best view of any cafeteria in academia. It’s a $4 million view, thanks to a renovation that includes a terrace overlooking the Rocky River Reservation of the Cleveland Metroparks. It also features a porch and rain garden.

A ribbon cutting with 500 guests is set for Sunday morning.

Cleveland kaleidoscope: Picture of diversity: The Washington Post Style Section carried a story Thursday about how diverse the crowd was at the Democratic National Convention.

The main photo used to exemplify the diversity? A wide shot of the Ohio delegation. Cleveland Lawyer Michael Wager, finance director for U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown’s campaign, had his law firm’s marketing rep call Tipoff to tell us he’d made the section cover.

But he’s not alone in the photo. Among many other flag-waving Dems pictured: State Sen. Nina Turner, County Executive Ed FitzGerald, Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman, Ohio Rep. Nickie Antonio of Lakewood and County Councilwoman Yvonne Conwell (we think.)

RIP: Former Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge John Angelotta died Thursday morning after battling cancer in Florida, where he relocated to in retirement.

Folks at the courthouse here were buzzing about the timing. Angelotta died a few hours after Art Modell, former owner of the Cleveland Browns, who lost a civil case before Angelotta that may have set him on the troubled financial course that led to his departure from Cleveland with the team in 1995.

Bob Gries, a minority owner of the Browns, sued Modell, who signed a lease giving his separate stadium company operating control of the Stadium and adjacent parking lots beginning in 1974. He was to get all revenue from the stadium – signage, rent from the Indians, concessions and such – and would pay $150,000 per year to the city for five years and $200,000 per year thereafter. Stadium Corp. also owned about 200 acres of land in Strongsville, the possible future stadium site.

It ended up costing him big as he had to make millions in repairs, then sign away concessions. And even before the Indians left they didn’t draw many paying customers.

His solution? In 1982, he convinced the board of the Browns, which he controlled, to buy Stadium Corp. and assume its debts, for $6 million.

Gries sued Modell, claiming the sale was simply done to reduce Modell’s personal debt. Judge Angelotta presided over a 17-day trial with 20 witnesses in 1986. The judged ruled in favor of Gries. Modell was ordered to buy back Stadium Corp. and pay Gries’ million dollars in legal fees.

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